Teenagers' house party that ended in tragedy

As the teenage friends bounced happily on the trampoline in the back garden of
a suburban West London home, it must have seemed like everything was in
place for a perfect house party.

Brian Dodgeon, top left, whose daughter Beatrice was hosting the party at his home, bottom left. Isobel Clara Reilly, right

By Heidi Blake and Martin Beckford

7:00AM BST 25 Apr 2011

The sky was still blue and the air warm after a beautiful day at the start of the Easter long weekend, and the parents of the party host were making themselves scarce for the evening.

The adults had even taken the trouble to knock on their neighbours’ doors earlier that day, warning them that they should expect to hear a little noise from the excited schoolgirls and boys who had been invited by their 14-year-old daughter, Beatrice, to let their hair down before the return to school on Tuesday.

But just a few hours later, after a drink and drugs-fuelled gathering, ambulances were rushing casualties to hospital.

The night proved memorable for all the wrong reasons after it ended with the death of one young guest, three more being treated in hospital and the arrest of the homeowner, Brian Dodgeon.

The 60 year-old academic and complementary therapist has lived in the same red-brick Victorian town house in North Kensington — on the same leafy road as Michael Gove, the Education Secretary — since 1997. The family lived on the first floor while the ground floor has been converted into a studio where Mr Dudgeon taught the Alexander Technique.

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The guests began to arrive in the early evening and by 9pm the party was in full swing, with about 14 teenage boys and girls playing loud electronic music.

Some drank cans of beer and cider while others swigged from vodka bottles and smoked cigarettes. Neighbours described how the atmosphere began to turn sour at about 11pm as fights broke out between two groups of boys.

A 25-year-old neighbour called Daniella said the party became so noisy that she was forced to leave the house at midnight. “They were all jumping on the trampoline, drinking and rolling cigarettes in Rizla papers,” she said. “In the end it was so loud that I had to go out. Some of the boys started shouting at each other and threatening to punch each other, but the girls were trying to calm them down.

“When I got home after 4am it was completely silent. Then early this morning I saw that the police had arrived.

“The family looked very normal and the dad looked like the responsible type.” Other neighbours said they were woken between 3am and 4am by screaming and raised voices from inside the house.

It is believed that one of the guests, Isobel Clara Reilly, had stopped breathing after taking drugs including ecstasy that allegedly belonged to Mr Dodgeon.

Michael Sutton and his wife Isabel live nearby. They described how they saw a girl screaming to be let inside the house at about 10pm. They awoke at 4am to see three ambulances and five police cars in the street, surrounded by teenagers.

Mr Sutton said: “We saw the paramedics carrying the body out of the house on a stretcher at about 6am. When they got her into the ambulance they were trying to revive her. The paramedics must have been in the house for about three hours so they obviously fought hard to save her.

“They [Mr Dodgeon and his family] seemed very nice. They were very ordinary and we got on well with them. Their daughter looks a lot older than she is because she wore a lot of make up and very modern, fashionable clothes when she went out.” Mr Sutton added that there was no sign of Mr Dodgeon or his partner, Miss Hadjipateras, throughout the entire episode, suggesting they were staying somewhere else for the night.

Isobel, 15, was pronounced dead on Saturday morning. Beatrice and two 14 year-old boys remained in hospital last night in a stable condition.